Diminished Expectations

This series is dystopic science fiction. It explores themes of emotion, personhood, discrimination, oppression, freedom and slavery, disability, family, and social malfunction. It contains some very dark and disturbing content, so readers are advised to think before proceeding.

The setting is a war-torn land with variable levels of technology. It features three broad groups of characters:

1) The unmodified humans. They further subdivide into conquerors and conquered. During the war, the conquerors deployed the chemical weapon which led to the Diminishment, primarily affecting the conquered but also some veterans among the conquerors. Humans suffer mainly from social oppressions such as homophobia.

2) The Diminished. They are humans with a particular range of birth defects resulting from a chemical weapon. This includes missing limbs, missing sensory organs, and/or exaggerated body features. A distinctive characteristic is lumpy white skin with minimal sensation. The Diminished are viewed with varying degrees of shame and disgust, often exploited. Human trafficking is technically illegal but often overlooked.3) The oids. They are manufactured beings with assorted features, some humanoid and some not. Androids resemble male humans; gynoids resemble female humans; and this matters in context because they are typically sought for different purposes. Some of the oids have animal heads or other nonhuman features. Although they can be sapient, oids are classified as nonpersons and therefore as property.

The first poem was "What Makes a Woman" back in January 2012, introducing the gynoid. Then in September 2013, during a Creative Jam with a theme of "emotions," the sculptures of Choi Xoo Ang provided inspiration for a bunch of ekphrastic poetry. The first poem written wound up being much later in the series.

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